.

* * * * *

With pounding wings, the bat swept off in lumbering flight, but with
its burden it seemed heavy, and failed to rise. The trees were close,
and their waving tentacles drew back, then shot out to splash about
the intruder. The talons released their hold, and the huge leather
wings flapped frantically; but too late. Both captor and captive were
wrapped in an embrace of iridescent arms and held struggling in
mid-air, while the unmoving watchers below stood in horror before this
drama of life and death.

Then a red bud opened. It was enormous, and its flowery beauty made
more revolting the spectacle of the living food that was thrust within
its maw.

The bud closed. Its petals were like lips.... And Diane, in
white-faced horror, was clinging to the protecting arm of Chet Bullard
beside her. Chet, too, had paled beneath his tan. But Walter Harkness,
though white of face, was staring not at the crimson bud, shut tightly
about its living food, but upward toward the broken, rocky face of the
cliff.

The flying thing, the unnamed horror of the air, had come silently
from on high. None of them had seen it until it struck, and he was
sure that the ape-men had been taken unaware. Then what had frightened
them? What other horror had driven them in screaming terror to that
fearful spring out into the open where they must have known danger
awaited?

Did a rock move? he wondered. Was the splotch of color--that mottling
of crimson and copper and gray--a part of the metallic mass? He rubbed
his smarting eyes--and when he looked again the color was gone. But he
had a conviction that eyes, sinister and deadly, had been staring into
his, that a living mass had withdrawn softly into a shadowed cave, and
that the menace that had threatened the ape-men was directed now
toward them.

Was this the reason for the silence? Was this valley, so peaceful in
its sunlit stillness, a place of death, from which all living things
kept clear? Had the ape-men been drawn there through curiosity at
seeing their ship float down?

And the quiet beauty of the valley--it might be as horrible a mockery
as the blazing splendor of those things ahead--those beautiful and
horrible eaters of flesh! His voice was unsteady as he turned toward
the others.

"Let's call this off," he said: "there is something up there. We'll go
back to the ship and get up in the air again. We'll find a healthier
place to land."